At the time Columbia released "Big Fun" in April 1974, Miles Davis was openly dismissive of the album. He had moved on through several changes of band members and was exploring new directions with the 'funk unit', his 1973-1975 band that would reach its artistic peak in live performances recorded in Japan, on the LPs “Agharta” and “Pangaea”.

Columbia could have released two of the lengthy tracks collected on “Big Fun”, “Great Expectations/Orange Lady” and “Lonely Fire”, as a single LP studio follow-up to Bitches Brew, but they had just spent money recording Miles’ touring band at the Cellar Door engagement, so they opted for a mix of edited long live tracks and short studio leftovers, “Live-Evil”. There were many other completed but unreleased performances in the can.

The meditative and harmonically static “Great Expectations” and “Lonely Fire” were recorded on November 19, 1969 and January 27, 1970, respectively. Although the two sessions feature different personnel, the presence of Brazilian percussionist Airto Moreira and Indian sitarist Khalil Balakrishna on both tracks, and the spaciousness of the two pieces, draw them together into something like stylistic unity. Slowly unfolding melodic statements played over the ‘exotic’ textures of hand percussion and sitar invite the listener into the flow of the music; a quiet statement in contrast to the confrontational tone of “Bitches Brew”. Miles' cultural tourism to Brazil and India was a detour, but not a dead end. When James Mtume Foreman joined the band in 1972, his percussion sounds and complex rhythms became intrinsic to the funk unit's performances.

The original two-LP set contained four tracks, each one occupying an entire LP side: “Great Expectations / Orange Lady” and “Ife” on record one, “Go Ahead John” and “Lonely Fire” on record two. "Ife" is the outlier on this release: it was recorded in June 1972, one week after the pieces that comprise "On The Corner", and is stylistically as well as chronologically unconnected to the other three tracks. Moreover, the piece itself underwent a significant change by the time it was featured in the Tokyo 1975 performances on “Agharta” and “Pangaea”; the tempo was slowed, the bass figure simplified, the mood altogether transformed. The two versions of “Ife” have little in common, and it seems that Miles just retained the title, a reference to an artistic center in Nigeria.

“Go Ahead John”, recorded on March 3, 1970, is a vehicle for guitarist John McLaughlin, who had participated on “In a Silent Way” and “Bitches Brew”, and would record throughout 1970 with Miles’ groups on several studio sessions, and one night of the Cellar Door engagement. The released track, according to the authoritative site plosin.com/milesAhead, was edited from sections of six takes. The edits might not be very audible, but producer Teo Macero’s overuse of a channel-switcher to flick the guitar rapidly back and forth across the stereo panorama, is obtrusive and indefensible. Macero’s splicing of multiple tracks into a simulated trumpet dialogue is another self-conscious effect that has no artistic merit, and thankfully, was never repeated on subsequent albums.

For this SACD, Sony added four pieces not included on the original two-LP set: “Recollections” (February 6, 1970), “Trevere” (November 28, 1969), “The Little Blue Frog” (November 28, 1969), and “Yaphet” (November 19, 1969). “Recollections” is another slow static jam and would have been a better choice on the original two-LP set than “Ife”, if stylistic coherence had been a consideration. “Trevere” is the most forward-looking; the simple repeated melodic motif over surging drums and percussion, unsettling electric organ swells and sudden silences points towards “Rated X” on “Get Up With It”.

“Big Fun” was an early, single-layer SACD release. The mastering provides sharp focus on the individual instruments and plenty of deep bass, but the effect is to push the mix aggressively ‘forward’.

Recently, I had an opportunity to hear the Vinyl Me Please LP set “Miles Davis: The Electric Years”, cut from “analog tape-to-tape transfers of the master tapes” by Ryan Smith. Smith has been mastering LP and SACD releases in the Acoustic Sounds Verve Series, which I strongly recommend in both formats. Smith’s transfer of the four tracks on the original “Big Fun” is a pure pleasure to hear, no less detailed than the respective tracks on the SACD. Perhaps Sony will re-license the material to Acoustic Sounds or Mobile Fidelity, so that it can be made available again to SACD enthusiasts.

Copyright © 2024 Mark Werlin and HRAudio.net

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